Does The Wire really deserve those credits?

I’m massively late to the party here, but I only recently caught up on The Wire. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to start droning on and on about how great it is!) Something I really noticed about it, though, was how long the title credits are. They’re really, really long – 90 seconds, to be precise.

Yes, I timed them. And then I dug out some DVD boxsets and timed some other TV shows’ opening credits, to compare. Lost’s famously short swirly logo sequence is 14 seconds long; Battlestar Galactica’s title credits are 41 seconds long; and Dexter’s are, incredibly, even longer than The Wire’s, at 100 seconds long.

Okay, maybe it doesn’t sound like that long, but when you add it up, considering that you watch that same minute-or-so at the beginning of every episode for several seasons, it starts to seem like an awful lot of time wasted. It’s not that they’re not well-crafted – most credit sequences are, and it’s obvious a lot of time and effort has gone into them. It’s just – well, I’m impatient!

24 or Heroes might be able to lay claim to the shortest title credits, at 10 seconds each – but I’ve got no idea what the longest TV title credits ever might be. Anyone know? I wonder if it depends on genre – soap operas generally have pretty long title credits, don’t they? Might make for an interesting graph someday…

Edited by Michael Parsons

Comments

Despite them being 90 seconds long, it's still great, and the show itself, bloody brilliant, thank god the BBC brought all five series of it.

scouser73

May 10th 2009

It used to be a little game I'd play to see if I could try and jump forward to the quote at the beginning of each episode.

I agree that it's too long but tbh when you can skip forward it's not too much hassle, it's quite interesting the first episode of each series to watch.ateotd the wire is so utterly awesome that this issue pales into insignificance whenever I think of it.

DW

May 11th 2009

Ten years ago, most TV shows used to have 30 to 40-second credits, from The X-Files to Sunset Beach, Baywatch and others. It was the norm, and the whole credits-creation process (which only happened once a show was picked up for a full season, explaining why a lot of pilot episodes didn't have credits when they aired) was an integral part of the commercialization and promotion of a TV show.

Linked to that is the fact that 10 years ago, episodes tended to last 48 to 52 minutes.

However, as US networks started selling more ads (they are, on average four commercial break during one episode), they asked writers to cut down their episodes to 42 minutes. That decision led a lot of show runners to get rid of or shorten the credits in favour of the story. That is why, we know have five-to10 seconds long credits for most shows (ER, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, Fringe, etc.)

However, shows such as Dexter and The Wire (and also Six Feet Under or True Blood to cite only these) air on paid networks (HBO and Showtime) where ad breaks do not exist. Consequently, show runners still have 52-minute long episodes and can spend more time on their credits, which in some cases help define their shows (just take a look at the True Blood credits, it's a work of art in itself).

Olivier Laurent

May 11th 2009

One promising candidate for the longest credit intro: The Prisoner. 170 seconds